FSU Lost $481K on National Title Appearance

When Florida State won the National Championship against Auburn back in January, I would assume the school didn’t think it would cost them $481,213. Well according to their balance sheet it did. The team reported expenses of $2,820,613. Now before you think they didn’t make any money, that was just the upfront cost. They more than made up for that loss in conference and BCS game payouts according to their AD Stan Wilcox:

“We’re not losing money in the long run, because as a conference, we’re making a lot more money and those dollars are filtered down to the institutions,” Wilcox said. “The issue has to do with the amount of expense allotted to go participate and what your expenses end up being.”

The thing that I love about this story though is that they did pay $1,372,805 to transport 699 people to Pasadena for the game, including 237 members of the team and staff and 416 band members. The band sometimes gets the shaft on these things so I am happy for them.